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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533800">Wrap Your Arms Around My Cortex</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas'>angeloncewas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cara | CaptainPuffy-centric, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Implied Violence, Moral Ambiguity, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Unbeta'd, niki is just niki, puffy is a knight, puffy was a pirate, tagging is difficult grrr, why is that so long and specific</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:22:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Puffy has lived her life to its fullest. She's seen the world and so much of what it has to offer, but none of it compares to Niki.</p><p>-</p><p>Love feels like everything Puffy never knew she was missing. It presses against her heart and scalds her flushed cheeks. She wants more.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Niki | Nihachu/Cara | CaptainPuffy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wrap Your Arms Around My Cortex</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>:)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>Puffy’s never been the ambitious sort.</p><p>There are people who stretch silent hands to the sky, but they are not her. The oceans have always been her great unknown, each oncoming wave bringing something entirely new.</p><p>She’s never cared all that much about discovery, instead valuing hush of an early morning and the soft call of the wind. Treasure doesn’t come to those who wait, but Puffy makes the most of her time.</p><p>That’s how she knows it has to be some sort of astronomical luck that brought Niki to her.</p><p>Niki isn’t perceived magic, she’s not a story told like a secret for effect. She is the sun, the sky, the entire system of interconnected worlds that Puffy can hardly wrap her head around most days.</p><p>Niki is warm and bright and untouchable and if Puffy could give her all of the small moments she has stored in her memory for safekeeping, she would.</p><p>Love feels like everything Puffy never knew she was missing. It presses against her heart and scalds her flushed cheeks. She wants more.</p><p>So, she takes it.</p><p>For this, she will stretch her limits. For Niki, she will prick her finger on every rosebush thorn and arrange dates in still-untouched locations.</p><p>She has never been ambitious, but she has also never wanted anything as much as this.</p><p>Niki’s hair sits uncomfortably along Puffy’s neck as they watch the sunset and she pulls Puffy’s jacket tighter to try and fend off the cold.</p><p>It’s more than worth it.</p><p> </p><p>“What is your favorite word?” Niki asks. Their shoulders brush as they walk along the Prime Path; their only company, the moon making its silent ascent.</p><p>Puffy tries to come up with something profound, but her mind goes blank.</p><p>“Um…”</p><p>Niki laughs softly. “You can think about it. Mine is infinitesimal.”</p><p><em> Infinitesimal. </em>Puffy rolls its syllables around on her tongue and Niki’s gaze flickers down to her lips before their eyes meet.</p><p>“It sounds cool, right?” They stop under a glowstone lamp and the light softens all of Niki’s features. “Like, ‘the universe is infinitesimal.’”</p><p>“Yeah,” Puffy nods. “What does it mean?”</p><p>“Really, really tiny.”</p><p>Niki smiles so bright it glitters, and Puffy doesn’t think she can argue.</p><p>The universe is miniscule. The distance between Niki’s hand and hers is everything. There are entire worlds wrapped up here.</p><p>“Victory, maybe,” Puffy answers.</p><p>She remembers an old song her crew used to sing, about how a sailor’s one love is the sea and the only way to lose that is to surrender to living on land.</p><p>The future is uncertain and Puffy still hasn’t quite managed to find her bearings, but she does believe that she’s found her true north.</p><p>She may be lost, but it feels like she’s won.</p><p>It feels like she’s free.</p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>The sun makes a sound.</p><p>It hums and whirs, a lonely star crying out for a radio signal. It says nothing. It says everything.</p><p>It sounds like a ship skimming across the water and the sharp hum of a cracked communicator and a language no one actually speaks.</p><p>Niki has always been the sun. Puffy wonders if she was a fool to think that she understood what that meant.</p><p>Everything was simpler out on the ocean. Her crew was one being; their hearts beat in perfect time and they only made promises they’d lose everything to keep.</p><p>It’s not like that here. Niki’s heart is an erratic and wild thing.</p><p>Puffy knows she has to come to terms with the facts.</p><p>Her crew isn’t hers anymore; it’s been a long time since she was a captain in anything other than name. The sun rose today, completely independent of the pieces of Puffy’s life, and it will do the same tomorrow. </p><p>The same person who chose her to love, chose someone else to hate, just as much.</p><p>Puffy once drank tea out of the cup that would eventually be used to poison Tommy. A gifted ring sits on the very same hand that reached for his neck.</p><p>She helped Niki collect materials that went to a murder plot.</p><p>Apparently, this world has a pattern of people unknowingly constructing cages for themselves.</p><p> </p><p>Niki’s knuckles are bruised and bloody and she keeps a tally of the days, claw-marked into the wall beside her bed.</p><p>“What’s your favorite word?” Puffy asks her.</p><p>Niki tilts her head like a swan and seems to ponder it. “Infinitesimal, still.” She taps nine beats against the wooden bedframe before pausing and repeating the motion. “It means almost nothing.”</p><p>Puffy huffs. “Plenty of things do, apparently.”</p><p>The smile she receives in return has yards of distance behind it. Niki laces her fingers together loosely.</p><p>“Don’t be like that, Puffy,” she says, as if Puffy is the difficult one.</p><p>Puffy hates having to do this. She knows that the jingle of iron will tuck her into bed and she mentally reminds herself to ask Eret for the day off next week.</p><p>There’s an open journal with scribbled-out pages and Niki sits, cross-legged and wide-eyed and Puffy feels like she’s drowning in this unfinished underground library.</p><p>It’s still Niki’s voice that comes to save her. “You didn't say yours.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Your word. I know what it used to be.”</p><p>Puffy never got to read the history books, but she has spoken to Tubbo. They won the war, hadn’t they? L’manberg, the first and second times.</p><p>Niki has basked in what Puffy once thought was important twice over and it’s clearly done nothing but tear her apart inside.</p><p>“Goodness, probably,” Puffy whispers, her voice breaking on the third syllable.</p><p>She turns to leave, to get air, and Niki says nothing to stop her.</p><p>Speaking to the prisoner isn’t required; Puffy’s only job is to make sure she doesn’t escape.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <em>What was your thought when you realised, you'll never feel naive love again? </em>
</p><p> </p><p>(I started this as a scene in a larger fic, but I lost interest and decided to add a second half to it and post it on its own. I hope you enjoyed &lt;3)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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